Archive for March 2009

Support for Norway’s Progress Party rose this month, with one pollster ranking it the country’s biggest political group, as voters backed its anti-immigration stance less than six months before parliamentary elections.

While governments in other parts of Europe lose support as voters condemn their handling of the financial crisis, Norway’s Labor government is struggling in polls after it tried to push through laws banning blasphemy and allowing police women to wear the hijab. The laws were withdrawn after a public outcry. Justice Minister Knut Storberget, whose ministry issued the proposals, has since gone on sick leave.

“People are losing their jobs, the economy seems to be going into recession but people are focusing on these issues instead,” said Torkel Brekke, professor of culture studies and oriental languages at the University of Oslo. “It tells you how important issues of identity are to small European countries and how people feel insecure about immigration.”

The Progress Party has support from 27.9 percent of voters in a Norstat poll published in the Vaart Land newspaper today, compared with 22.1 percent in the 2005 election. Backing for the ruling Labor Party fell to 31.7 percent from 32.8 percent in 2005. The poll, which had a margin of error of 2-3 points, was conducted March 17-22 and based on interviews with 1,000 people.

A survey by Opinion, published by news Web site Hegnar on March 18, gave the Progress Party a backing of 30.9 percent after gaining 6.4 percent in March, making it the country’s largest party.
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Sophomores Trevor Williams and Devin Saucier discuss their chapter of “Youth for Western Civilization.” The group sponsored a lecture by former United States Treasurer Bay Buchanan on the controversial topic of “Illegial Immigration and Patriotic Assimilation.” Listen as they outline their main views in this podcast.

Podcast linked here:

http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/node/9853

Tribute to Youth for Western Civilization Video:

Obama and his public relations team have made it appear that his trillion dollars in higher taxes will fall only on “the rich.” Obama stresses that his tax increase is only for the richest 5 percent of Americans while the other 95 percent receive a tax cut.

The fact of the matter is that the income differences within the top 5% are far wider than the differences between the lower tax brackets and the “rich” American in the 96th percentile.

For Obama, being “rich” begins with $250,000 in annual income, the bottom rung of the top 5 percent. Compare this “rich” income to that of, for example, Hank Paulson, President George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary when he was the head of Goldman Sachs.

In 2005 Paulson was paid $38.3 million in salary, stock and options. That is 153 times the annual income of the “rich” $250,000 person.

Despite his massive income, Paulson himself was not among the super rich of that year, when a dozen hedge fund operators made $1,000 million. The hedge fund honchos incomes were 26 times greater than Paulson’s and 4,000 times greater than the “rich” man’s or family’s $250,000.

For most Americans, a $250,000 income would be a godsend, but envy can make us blind. A $250,000 income is not one that will support a rich lifestyle. Moreover, many people prefer lesser incomes to the years of education, long work hours and stress of personal liability that are associated with many $250,000 incomes. In truth, those with $250,000 gross incomes have more in common with those at the lower end of the income distribution than with the rich. A $250,000 income is ten times greater than a $25,000 income, not hundreds or thousands of times greater. On an after-tax basis, the difference shrinks to about 6 times.
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Rural Policy Research Institute
This recession has been harder on rural communities than the last two economic downturns. In this chart, 100 equals job totals at the beginning of each recession.

Rural America has lost more jobs, and at a faster pace, than in the previous two severe economic downturns. (See the chart above, which shows the percentage of job loss since the beginning of each recession.) In this recession, rural counties have already lost 3.4% of their jobs. In the 2001 recession, job losses mounted to just above 1 percent, which was higher than the recession of 1990-01.

Huge swaths of rural Amerca now have unemployment rates that far exceed the national average. (See the map here for unemployment rates in rural and exurban counties for January.) The chart above, produced by economists Sean Moore and Mark Drabenstott, tells us first that this recession is severe, deep and continuing.
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America’s small farmers are under attack through a series of bills presented under the guise of “food safety.” I don’t want to lose my freedom to grow, buy and eat real foods. Let’s fight for our small farmers who not only need our protection and support, but actual freeing from government intrusion, control and harm.

Immigrant workers in the U.S. and abroad, critical to the restaurant industry, are finding a more difficult work environment in host countries thanks to rising unemployment rates—a fact that could hinder sales at international quick-serves whose customers rely on funds sent home by relatives working in impacted countries.

In late January, Malaysian authorities announced that foreign workers from Indonesia and elsewhere were no longer welcome as the government attempted to protect citizens from job losses. South Korea has instituted a large-scale crackdown on illegal aliens. And in Spain, Spanish nationals were working their own fields during the harvest, a trend that has not occurred in more than a decade.

Already the depressed economy and anti-immigrant sentiment is serving as a deterrent to would-be newcomers. An apparent slowdown in the participation of foreign-born workers in the global labor force and the subsequent impact of their declining income on home markets could have a ripple effect on the fast-food sector in markets around the world.

“There’s kind of a policy of national preference in terms of hiring,” says Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which tracks worker movement around the world. The group estimates there are about 200 million international migrants working globally, accounting for 3 percent of the world’s population.
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Five Killed, Two Critically Wounded

Denis C. Theriault reports in California’s Mercury News, that there has been a terrible Santa Clara shooting that has left five people dead and two people wounded. The wounded are in critical condition.

Theriault’s article, “Five dead, two critically wounded in Santa Clara shooting,” goes on to say that the dead included two children of unknown ages and the wounded also included one child.

It appears to be a murder-suicide.

All the dead died of gunshot wounds but details, such as the caliber of gun used and identification of victims was not known or released.

Santa Clara is an upscale neighborhood with well-manicured lawns and is home to young couples and professionals. It was suggested that this was the crime to date and shocked the families in the locale however it appears that Santa Clara has a history of murder-suicides.

There have been, primarily, problems with marriages. In the throes of divorce or separation, one partner or another cannot cope with the situation.

Additionally, in the referenced article it turns out that there is a racial factor in family suicides.
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Varun Gandhi sparked riot-like scenes yesterday when he surrendered himself to police over charges of inciting racial hatred.

The great grandson of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has been at the centre of a political storm since he was captured by television cameras earlier this month telling a rally the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would “cut the heads of Muslims” and comparing a rival Muslim candidate to al-Qa’ida leader Osama bin Laden.

He has denied making the statements and has claimed the footage was doctored - a charge dismissed by India’s electoral commission, which has asked the BJP to withdraw his candidacy.

The 29-year-old is making his election debut contesting the lower house seat of Pilibhit in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh for the BJP, and is being hailed as the fresh hope of the party.

A saffron-clad Mr Gandhi told flag-waving supporters before his arrest at the weekend he was “ready to go to jail”.

Later, as he emerged from the court, he claimed: “I am being framed in fake cases by my political rivals and have full faith in the judiciary.

“My only objective in coming here is to strengthen my people, my society and the whole country. I will not step back.”
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THE HAGUE - The Freedom Party is in first place and is now four seats ahead of the Christian Democrats, the largest of the three parties in the governing coalition.

Pollster Maurice de Hond attributes the rise in popularity to his departure from a parliamentary debate on Thursday.

He walked out of the debate in a huff, describing the debate on the economic crisis as “a sham”.

His ratings began to soar in February, when the British government refused to allow him to enter the country.

Sixty percent of voters who describe themselves as right-wing say they will vote for Wilders’ Freedom Party.
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A new University of California admissions policy, adopted to increase campus diversity, could actually increase the number of white students on campuses while driving down the Asian population.

Now angry Asian-American community leaders and educators are attacking the policy as ill-conceived, poorly publicized and discriminatory.

“It’s affirmative action for whites,” said UC-Berkeley professor Ling-chi Wang. “I’m really outraged “… and profoundly disappointed with the institution.”

At an Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education conference Friday in San Francisco, Asian activists also noted the policy will result in negligible increases in African-American students and only a modest climb in the number of Latinos. But it’s the drop in the already significant Asian count that has many in that community so upset.

Although Asians account for only 12 percent of the state’s population, they now represent 37 percent of UC admissions — the single largest ethnic group. At UC-Berkeley, 46 percent of the freshman class is Asian. There are dormitories with Asian themes and spicy bowls of pho are served up in the Bear’s Lair cafeteria.

Under the new policy, according to UC’s own estimate, the proportion of Asian admissions would drop as much as 7 percent, while admissions of whites could rise by up to 10 percent.
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